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Biden Focuses On Personal Healthcare Experiences In New T.V. Ad; Puerto Rico Under Hurricane Watch And Tropical Storm Warning; Landmark Opioid Judgment Could Pave Way In Fight Against Crisis. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 27, 2019 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A good morning. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington. Poppy Harlow is off today.

Joe Biden opens up while his 2020 foes appear at least in one poll to be closing in. In his second television ad just released in Iowa, Biden focuses on healthcare, by recalling personal family tragedies, including the deaths of his wife and daughter from a car accident, also his son, Beau's losing fight with brain cancer. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I can't fathom what would have happened if the insurance companies had said for the last six months of his life, you're on your own. The fact of the matter is, healthcare is personal to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: And is this an outlier or a trend? A new poll from Monmouth University shows Biden's lead slipping, has him virtually tied at the top with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. CNN's own polling still shows him with a large lead.

Joining me now, CNN's Arlette Saenz. Is this a new strategy by Biden in this new ad going very personal on an issue that we know is deeply personal for the vice president?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, Jim, it certainly is. That first T.V. ad that he released in Iowa last week really focused on his electability argument. And now, they are highlighting this personal side of Joe Biden.

This is something that you hear him talk about often on the campaign trail as he talks about healthcare, relating his experience when his wife and young daughter were killed in that car accident and then his two sons were injured, and what they had to go through in the hospital as they recovered, and also talking about Beau Biden, who passed away from cancer a few years ago. And Biden has talked about how he doesn't know how his family would have gotten through it if they did not have healthcare coverage.

But this also allows the Biden campaign to drill in on that issue of healthcare, which they find critically important in this election. You hear the former vice president repeatedly over and over on the campaign trail highlight his work on the Affordable Care Act with President Obama and insist that he wants to protect that as he is drawing contrast from other candidates who he says are trying to kind of scrap Obamacare and start all over.

So this is a very clear personal message when it comes to healthcare from the former vice president.

SCIUTTO: So you've been covering the Biden campaign for some time and I'm sure they look at this Monmouth poll. They say it's an outlier. But I'm wondering when you speak with them privately, are they seeing any concerning signals in this polling, things -- issues that they want to address or change of strategy that they want to consider?

SAENZ: Well, the Biden campaign is hoping that this will be an outlier in that poll, as you have Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden all bunched up in that 20 percent to 19 percent range, with no clear leader in the poll currently. But then you look at polls like the CNN poll that was released last week where Biden was leading 29 percent, followed by Sanders and Warren bunched up right there at 15 and 14 percent. I think the Biden campaign is hoping that that's the trajectory that the polls will continue to take in the coming weeks going forward.

But certainly you need to keep an eye on the poll like the Monmouth poll, because it could be the start of a trend. But for now, they're pointing to those later polls saying that that's what is actually the state of the race right now. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Arlette Saenz in Washington, thanks very much.

Let's continue the 2020 discussion. I'm joined now by Ron Brownstein, he's senior editor for The Atlantic, and Rachael Bade, she is the congressional reporter for The Washington Post.

Ron, you've covered a few campaigns in your time. As you look at these polls, which do you believe?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, look, I mean, I think that this poll right now is different than everything else we have seen in its magnitude but not necessarily in its direction. There was a bunch of polling in mid-August, the CNN poll, and before that, Pew poll and the Fox poll. They basically looked the same with Biden ahead and Warren and Sanders bunched up behind him.

But the general direction that we have seen -- that the Monmouth poll points us to I think is what we see in front of us. I mean, Biden certainly has lost some altitude from where he started, particularly as the other candidates have gotten better known. Elizabeth Warren has an audience. I mean, she showed it over the weekend by drawing 15,000 people in Seattle. And, Jim, the demographic divides in the race in this polling is pretty consistent. Biden is strongest among older and moderate whites, as well as African-Americans, Elizabeth Warren is very strong among college-educated white liberals, particularly somewhat older, and Sanders the strong among the young. That's where we are. I don't know the magnitude of the kind of the convergence that Monmouth has, but in terms of illuminating the general direction of the race, I think that is a fair picture.

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SCIUTTO: Rachael, the clear focus in this latest Biden ad is healthcare, which is consistently at the top or near the top of voting issues for Democratic voters and, really, frankly, general public voters in this coming election and making a personal connection there. I imagine that's a strategic choice by the vice president -- the former vice president, because he seems to think he does well when he makes these issues personal for him.

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right, yes. And I think that there's nothing that really resonates with voters more than a personal story, especially when it comes to healthcare. Most people would have some sort of family member, whether in their immediate family or distant relative that has had trouble with insurance company or someone being denied maybe years ago before Obamacare went into effect. And so that's a smart strategy for Biden to sort of highlight that and that Obamacare has changed all that.

But it does more than sort of push back on the Medicare for all wing of the party, which is where a lot of the Democrats running for 2020 want to go. It also has an appeal to the more independent voters and perhaps even some Republicans.

Remember, the pre-existing condition protection over Obamacare is extremely popular not just with Democrats, but also a lot of Republicans too. Number one, it makes a personal story for him, which has people connect to him, it pushes back on the far left wing of the Democratic Party by saying Obamacare works, and number three, it sort of reaches across the aisle to those independent voters who might otherwise might vote Republican because of the protections for pre- existing conditions are so popular.

SCIUTTO: Ron, I'm going to ask you to look three years back in history, ancient history, and remember a campaign where the Democratic Party had a long-time frontrunner that a lot of the party folks said, well, this is our safe bet. And then they had another challenger who energized other parts of the base better. Of course, the former one and then lost in the general. I mean, do you see the parallels between the dynamic now with Biden and the other candidates in 2016 or is that misplaced?

BROWNSTEIN: Kind of that heart and head dynamic, right? I mean, there's no question that there is a portion of the party that is falling, particularly for Elizabeth Warren. I mean, the crowd she is drawing are much bigger than anyone else. The big difference between now and 2016 is that, at this point in 2016, Democrats did not view Donald Trump as the kind of threat that he evolved into. He is now the president. And beating him is such an overwhelming priority for Democrats that that I think is a stronger safety net at the moment under Joe Biden than it might appear. I mean, even though his lead in the horse race has narrowed in all polls, really, from where he started when he announced, his lead on who can beat Trump remains pretty substantial, particularly among older Democrats, white and African-American.

And I think until that number begins -- until the other candidates can cut into that number, again, I think it bolsters him more than some of the horse race numbers might appear. Because beating Trump is kind of an existential priority for Democratic voters and even some -- even independent voters who have moved away from the Republican Party since he took office.

BADE: Which is the job (ph) in there.

SCIUTTO: And we have now some Republicans too who are stepping out, Joe Walsh, Scaramucci, et cetera.

Sorry, Rachael, go ahead.

BADE: No. I was just going to say the electability argument. I mean, you draw parallels between now and 2016. That was the central argument for Hillary Clinton, for making her the nominee. And perhaps it worked in the primary but it really didn't drive people out to vote for her and she lost the election in 2016. So it didn't work.

But I think we've seen in the polls recently that this whole argument of electability when it comes to Joe Biden, people do see that as the number one issue in terms of choosing a candidate, but the number of people who say that has declined, according to your CNN polling that you guys had last week. And I think that that's what we're seeing in this new poll, even though people are not sure if this Monmouth poll is actually correct and sort of have questions about it since it is an outlier.

It is showing that trend and that people are getting more excited about Elizabeth Warren, who has a lot of policy proposals and is really taking off right now even as this sort of electability argument that Joe Biden has made is declining and he's pivoting to that personal message to maybe try something new.

SCIUTTO: Sorry, Ron, final thought before we go.

BROWNSTEIN: Real quick, I think that's why we see such divides in the Democratic race. If you look at this polling, Biden is very weak with young voters, but Warren is very weak with moderate voters. Right now, she's in single digits among African-American voters.

We are seeing the party fissure along lines we have seen in the past. Biden is recreating what I've called the bureaucrat beer track kind of coalition of older, more moderate blue collar whites and African- Americans. Warren is very much at this moment a wine track candidate, heavily dependent on white liberals, strong in those states where there are a lot of college whites but maybe struggling at some of those more diverse states as the calendar moves on.

SCIUTTO: And the road to the White House goes through Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, et cetera. Who wins there? A key question. Ron Brownstein, Rachael Bade, thanks very much.

Right now, tropical storm Dorian is moving through the Caribbean, barreling towards Puerto Rico.

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It's got Florida behind it. The people there are bracing for what could be a direct hit tomorrow.

Just two years ago, you remember Puerto Rico was devastated by a category four hurricane, Maria. The island has still not recovered from that.

Let's get to CNN's Chad Myers. He's at the CNN Weather Center. Where is it going? How strong will it be?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Two good questions. I believe the eye, if there is one, may not even hit Puerto Rico. But Puerto Rico will be on the right side, the bad side of the center, one way or the other. We've boxed up most of the Caribbean here either with watches or warnings. Still likely in the neighborhood of, let me do some addition, 30 hours away from what the worst conditions that Puerto Rico will likely see.

Yesterday at this time, the forecast was for an 80-mile per hour storm to the southwest of Puerto Rico. Today, it's 70. I'm looking at all the observations, the plane flying through it. It's a very disorganized storm right now because it just went over the islands here. It just went over Martinique. Martinique is 4,000 feet tall. That's enough to kind of lose the eye, lose the center.

In fact, the hurricane hunter right now, having a difficult time finding the center, finding the lowest pressure. That's good news. The bad news, when it gets away from the island, we're in very warm water and then it goes through the area between Puerto Rico and the D.R. Probably Punta Cana would be the center of the eye.

But remember, if the center is here, the worst part of the storm is to the right. So even though Puerto Rico may have miss of the middle, it won't have a miss of the worst part. The worst part will be right on shore there from Ponce all the way up even into almost San Juan, but that's on the other side of the island.

Now, the second part of the storm, now, we're into the Bahamas on Saturday. The water here is 89 degrees. This is the problem. Models are in agreement, taking it right toward P.R., right toward Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but then right through the Bahamas, right through the 89 degree water and into Florida on Saturday night and Sunday. This is the temperature of the water. Everywhere that you see this color, upper 80s to almost 90, that is the fuel to the fire, Jim, that could make this an explosive development storm.

We saw that all year last year. When you get a storm in this kind of warm water, it has a lot of potential. We can't keep our eyes -- take our eyes off this for Florida. This is a big storm for them maybe.

SCIUTTO: Well, Puerto Rico first, we'll be watching for Florida next, Chad. Great to have you on it as always.

Still to come this hour, the impact of a landmark ruling against Johnson & Johnson in Oklahoma's opioid crisis could soon be felt across the country.

Plus, happening now, police in Florida announce charges against several former nursing home employees over the deaths of 12 elderly patients after hurricane Irma there.

And some bad blood may be brewing between Taylor Swift and the White House. Hear her message to the Trump administration.

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SCIUTTO: Johnson & Johnson says it will appeal the landmark ruling out of Oklahoma that found the pharmaceutical giant liable for creating -- helping to create the opioid epidemic there. Yesterday, a judge ordered the company to pay some half a billion dollars to the state saying it misled the public about the addictive nature of opioids. Johnson & Johnson says the decision is flawed.

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SABRINA STRONG, ATTORNEY FOR JOHNSON & JOHNSON: The way in which the company manufactured these medications and marketed them to doctors was extremely responsible. There are warnings on these medications, FDA-approved warnings, and it is up to the doctor, with their patients, to make decisions about who is appropriate for these medications.

BRAD BECKWORTH, LEAD OUTSIDE COUNSEL IN OKLAHOMA'S OPIOID LAWSUIT: Doctors do the prescribing, but they do it based on the information that the drug companies gave.

They went to every doctor and said, look, there is a less than 1 percent chance of becoming addicted if you use our drugs every day. That was just a lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta joins me now. He's been covering the story since the beginning.

And, Sanjay, in addition to being a doctor, you've been covering this story deeply here and I wonder what your reaction to this decision is. Does the company share in the responsibility for this or should, as Johnson & Johnson lawyers say, the onus really be on the doctors here to make this judgment?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the Johnson & Johnson lawyers are making a reasonable point here in that they prescribed a drug that was used as intended. There were warnings and things like that. But I'll tell you a couple of things, and this is just sort of being within the system.

First of all, what is written versus how the drug representatives who are going to doctors' offices, going to hospitals were representing the drugs weren't always the same thing. So they were writing this down, but they were also saying, look, it's a pseudo addiction, don't worry about it. There was very much a culture of understating the dangers of this.

Having said that, Jim, to your point, I do think that there's a lot of blame that should be shouldered by the doctors themselves for a couple of reasons.

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One is that you've got to do your own research and due diligence, like reporters do, doctors have to do that as well. Just because somebody tells you this stuff, there was no data to support what they were saying. So some simple questions would have started to uncover that.

Second of all, these medications are in some ways available all over the developed world, and yet this is really an American-made problem we're talking about, Jim. I mean, 80 percent to 90 percent of some of these drugs were consumed in this country, a country that's not even 5 percent of the world's population. Why? Because doctors were prescribing them too much.

So for those two reasons, I do think doctors share some of the blame as do the pharmaceutical companies.

SCIUTTO: And we trust our doctors to make informed decisions and then help us make informed decisions. And what get at there, and I read a book about dope sick, which got at this, is this idea that it's the private conversations, like ignore the user agreement, here's the real deal, and by the way, we'll both make out from this, right? Is that the central allegation here?

GUPTA: Very much so. And, by the way, doctors X, Y and Z, they're prescribing it no problem down the street and why should your patients be in pain when their patients are never in pain? It was these types of discussions. But it's this understating of the risks I think that was problematic in these conversations, this term pseudo addiction that was used, which is not even a real term. It's just meant to minimize what is a serious problem, addiction. So for those reasons, I think that the pharmaceutical companies definitely were part of this.

But as the Johnson & Johnson lawyer has said in the past, it's complicated and there was plenty of blame to go around. Why wasn't the FDA and the federal government more involved with this as well? This has been going on for 20 years, Jim.

And the number of people who died, it's on par with the AIDS epidemic. There are so many stories there. But how much attention did we pay to the AIDS epidemic? A ton. And who much did we pay to this hardly, any, until the last few years?

SCIUTTO: And I've asked the families if it was a pseudo addiction. And I've talked to them, as I know you have too, people who have lost people with this.

You bring up regulators. Is there evidence of a failure by the regulators here as well?

GUPTA: There was no data to suggest that this would not be addictive. There was no data to suggest that this was being used for its intended purposes. The data was primarily provided was on chronic cancer patients, patients with chronic pain due to cancer, oftentimes near the end of their lives. The fact that it started getting used in all these other settings, and kids for whom it was never tested, that's all part of the problem as well. Why was it allowed to be used that way?

You can use some of these substances off label or in different ways, but once it became clear that thousands of people were dying, at some point, you would have thought that there would have been increased scrutiny and regulation.

SCIUTTO: Yes. It's so good to have you on this story. It's certainly one we cover closely and we will stay on top. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much.

Let's speak more about the legal implications of this with former federal prosecutor, Shan Wu.

So, Shan, this was prosecuted on an interesting legal basis, using what's known as the public nuisance law here. Tell us what that is exactly and how unusual this was for the plaintiffs to pursue on this.

SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's an unusual theory, Jim. Public nuisance would be -- an example of that is you have a rundown house in the neighborhood that's an eyesore. And in this case, that's what they're using, but in this case, the eyesore actually kills people. It's not just an eyesore. So it's a novel legal argument and whenever you have a novel legal argument, it's vulnerable to attack. So no doubt that Johnson & Johnson lawyers were kind of licking their chops for the appeal.

But on the other side of that, this was a bench trial, what we call a trial done by a judge, and there are a lot of issues here that could be much more appealing to a jury than to a judge, and yet this judge found against Johnson & Johnson.

These are what we call dam cracking cases. The industry lawyers spend decades sometimes carefully building up their dam to regulations, legislation, warnings. And the plaintiffs lawyers are looking for little cracks in that that can be exploited to make that dam collapse. SCIUTTO: Yes. So as you know, you have dozens of other communities, states, municipalities, counties, set to sue the drugmakers as well. Does this then become the potential basis for other similar cases?

WU: It does. The theory is being scrutinized very closely by the plaintiffs lawyers to see if they can apply it as well. And for Johnson & Johnson, there is talk about how they shouldn't have taken this to trial.

But it's actually a good strategy for them to do it. They want a test case to know what's going on. It's going to slow down these other cases through the appeal and you're going to see that the bulk of these cases coming behind are going to be careful about committing to this theory until they know what the Court of Appeals are going to do with it.

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SCIUTTO: Final question, this is half a billion dollars. Now, the plaintiffs had been seeking $17 billion, so this is 1/34th of what they sought. But half a billion dollars it not a small amount of money here. Do victims' families or victims see any of this? Does this go to communities? Where does the money go?

WU: In this case, it sounds like what the judge did was he felt there was enough data to give this award for -- I think they called it like the first year worth of services that would have to be paid back. So some of this money should go under this plan for recovery to the communities, to the state to provide these services to recover. I think the state estimated it will take some 20 years to recover. That's where they came up with a larger number from.

For personal injury suits, the victims will certainly get a portion of that after expenses and a contingency fee is probably taken out by the lawyers.

SCIUTTO: The lawyers have got to take their cut, Shan. Thanks very much for covering this very serious case and I know we're going to continue to discuss it.

Stocks reacted positively after President Trump said that China called and wanted to strike a trade deal, whether or not that was actually true. But now, one Chinese official says they don't know anything about this call. Did it happen? And what does it mean for a potential agreement?

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